Facebook Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Dead friends on FB

brutal

My old friend Dan asked “Seriously, folks. What do we do with dead friends on FB?” He linked to a Pickles cartoon.

Opal: I just noticed that my cousin Ethel is still one of my Facebook friends. I wonder if I should remove her name?

Earl: Why, are you mad at her?

Opal: Oh, no, she died two years ago, and it’s kind of annoying that she still has more Facebook friends than I do.

Someone responded to Dan, “Every day I’m reminded of old FB friends who have passed away and always wonder if I should unfriend them.” Dan replied, “Right! I feel like deleting is like I’m finally finishing them off, or desecrating their memories. It’s actually painful.”

I get that. I added, “Back in the day, when I had an address book – with paper and you entered records with pencil- when someone died, it took me a couple of years to erase them. It was brutal.”

What do all y’all do with the social media you interact with friends and family who have died? To delete or not delete; that is the question.

Armen

Simultaneously, I kept seeing “happy birthday” wishes to my old buddy Armen Boyajian, whom I knew from Binghamton Central High School because his birthday is March 2nd. Unfortunately, Armen died a couple of years ago.

I looked at the comments to his Facebook page and believe that some of them don’t know he’s gone. These weren’t “heavenly birthday” or similar. No wonder; he was only 68 then and would only be 71 now.

I took it upon myself to post on his FB page: “I was pleased that we reconnected. You were even following my blog! So I was so sad when you passed on 12/5/2022. You were a talented guy and a good man.” Heck, I wrote a response to a question he asked on December 2, but curiously, he didn’t acknowledge it. I doubt he ever saw it.

This begs a different question: what do I want to have happened to my Facebook when I die? I suppose I should talk to my daughter about it. My wife isn’t on Facebook, which is fine, but she does not understand its value, so my daughter would be a better party to decide.

Musing about social media

“your movement won’t be very popular”

I’ve been musing about social media recently. The Supreme Court recently allowed the effective end of TikTok, owned by ByteDance, in the United States, barring its sale to a non-Chinese company. Less than a day later, TikTok was back, at least for a time.

Of course, other media companies are busy figuring out how to poach those TikTok users, whether or not there’s a sale or other rescue.

I came across Cory Doctorow’s Billionaire-proofing the Internet. The subtitle spoke to me: “Scolding people for choosing popular services is no way to build a popular movement.”

He starts with the story of the record companies who sued users during the days of Napster, keeping the money for themselves rather than passing the proceeds to the artists they were allegedly “protecting.”

“What we didn’t agree on was what to do about it. A lot of us wanted to reform copyright – say, by creating a blanket license for internet music so that artists could get paid directly. This was the systemic approach.

“Another group – call them the ‘individualists’ – wanted a boycott. Just stop buying and listening to music from the major labels…

“Here’s what I would say when people told me we should all stop listening to popular music: ‘If members of your popular movement are not allowed to listen to popular music, your movement won’t be very popular.'”

Cost

“Which brings me to social media. The problem with social media is that the people we love and want to interact with are being held prisoner in walled gardens. The mechanism of their imprisonment is the ‘switching costs’ of leaving. Our friends and communities are on bad social media networks because they love each other more than they hate Musk or Zuck. Leaving a social platform can cost you contact with family members in the country you emigrated from, a support group of people who share your rare disease, the customers or audience you rely on for your livelihood, or just the other parents organizing your kid’s little league game.”

Indeed, I have been on Facebook for about a decade. I got on initially because my niece Rebecca, who lives in California, posted her activities on the site. Before that, I didn’t know what she was doing half the time as she traveled all over the country. Subsequently, I found people I knew in the world: old friends and formerly distant relatives. I joined interest groups.

“Hypothetically, you could organize all these people to leave at once, go somewhere else, and re-establish all your social connections. Practically, the ‘collective action problem’ of doing so is nearly insurmountable. This is what platform owners depend on… “

Yes, I joined BlueSky, but it’s like moving to a new school as a kid. You find your way eventually.

A solution

“There’s a way out of this, thankfully. When social media is federated, you can leave a server without leaving your friends. Think of it as being similar to changing cell phone companies. When you switch from Verizon to T-Mobile, you keep your number, you keep your address book, and you keep your friends, who won’t even know you switched networks unless you tell them.”

“There’s no reason social media couldn’t work this way. You should be able to leave Facebook or Twitter for Mastodon, Bluesky, or any other service and still talk with the people you left behind, provided they still want to talk with you.”

It explains a whole how-to that involves legislation and whatnot so that it won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, I want to clarify that I don’t think it’s bad if people decide to leave a site. I left Twitter not so much because I didn’t like Musk or think that X is a stupid name, as I had read that Twitter would use my information to train its AI bots.

It isn’t easy to leave some of these sites. Here’s a detailed article about how to get off Facebook, which is way more complicated than you would think. In case it’s paywalled, there are five steps from settings to finding deactivation, five more until you reach “please don’t go,” and five more after that.

“Almost certainly, in the future, this experience will be illegal, as emerging privacy laws require experiences continue to insist that companies like Facebook and Amazon make it just as easy to leave their experiences as to sign up. In fact, the FTC has already announced a rule that likely makes what you see above illegal in the United States, though it hasn’t come into effect yet. (We’ll see if that happens under the [FOTUS] administration, I suppose.)”

Finnish kids recognize fake news

AI manipulation

On CBS Sunday Morning, which continues to be one of my favorite programs, there was a September 30 segment about how Finnish kids recognize fake news. “Being able to identify hoaxes, avoid scams, and debunk propaganda is a civic skill required in today’s information society. That’s why the curriculum of students in Finland includes media literacy lessons, aimed at safeguarding a precious resource: the truth.”

There’s a similar story on CNA. Finland’s war against fake news starts at a young age. “With an ever-growing number of people getting their news online, being able to work out what’s true – and what’s not – has never been more important. In a world of digital disinformation, one country is often held up as the benchmark for having a media-literate population. Finland has topped the Media Literacy Index for the seven years the ranking system has been in existence.”

In 2019, CNN reported on the topic. “Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy.”

I will state the obvious here: we need this in the United States, and not just for children. As a citizen and a librarian, misinformation, and especially disinformation, distresses me.

I posted on Facebook a visual about the myth when people say, “Do your own research!” This post is credited to Linda Gamble Spadaro, a licensed medical mental health counselor in Florida. “You didn’t research anything. You read or watched a video, most likely with little or no objectivity. You came across something in your algorithm-manipulated feed, something that jived with your implicit biases and served your confirmation bias, and subconsciously applied your emotional filters and called it proof.”

My buddy J. Eric Smith wrote about this topic 14 years ago, and it’s still dead on.

Looking for nonsense

I pulled out my phone on October 2 to check my Facebook feed.

Rock Music World: “Ringo Starr turns 84 today!” No, he didn’t. He is 84, but his birthday is July 7. At least 78 people shared the post. Various feeds list the birthdays of actors and musicians, but they are often incorrect. You may think of this as inconsequential, but I guess I’m old-school enough to think that FACTS MATTER, especially easily verifiable ones. (Ssh: I’ve been known to use books.) A Google search would get you to Ringo’s website, but every other source in the search, such as Modern Drummer, confirms the real date.

Some guy from New Jersey is sharing something I’ve seen before: [SIC] “I’m no mathematician, but I’m not bad at math. Can someone please explain? AOC went into office broke and in five years she’s worth $29 million. on a $155K salary??? When does her investigation begin?” Never. Check out FactCheck, Politifact, USA Today, and other sources.

Then there was the photo showing djt in a lifejacket helping storm victims in floodwaters after Hurricane Helene. One Facebook user posted of the picture, “I think we should all repost it!!!!” Another person added, “‘He lives and cares for people, all people!” And “I don’t think Facebook wants this picture on Facebook. They have been deleting it.” The post received more than 150,000 shares in just 16 hours.” And it’s FALSE. “Odd-looking hands and fingers are one sign of AI manipulation in photos.”

Some folks need to make a minimum of effort to verify before they share.

The worst

Unfortunately, the biggest purveyor of falsehood, particularly in light of the Hurricane Helene disaster, is the 45th president. He lies about how money has been funneled from potential hurricane victims to immigrants. Not only does he harm the people who could use the help, but he also foments despair and immigrant phobia.

Extracted from Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters From an American,” 9/27/2024:

“Republican governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin told reporters that he was ‘incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and cooperation from the federal team at FEMA.’ Asheville, North Carolina, mayor Esther Manheimer told CNBC, ‘We have support from outside organizations, other fire departments sending us resources, the federal government as well. So it’s all-hands-on-deck, and it is a well-coordinated effort, but it is so enormous….’”

And the lies persist.

But my favorite bit of nonsense, because it’s so obvious, was in my email, with an attachment I did not open. “Good morning. When there are ambiguous conditions around a contract, Agreement-Number… can be used in the event that it is difficult to determine whether it was created, expired without being resolved, or is no longer valid as a result of the contract having expired. so long”

Outrage! I mean Outage!

National Landline Telephone Day

Sometimes, when I see a certain word, I read it as another. For instance, I read the word Outage more often than not as Outrage. I wonder if it’s because many folks are outraged when there is an outage – there’s a blackout after severe weather.

Sometimes, it’s warranted, such as after the Maui, Hawaii fires of 2023, which cost people their lives.

I’m sure the massive AT&T outage in February 2024 was problematic for some. But I felt more outrage when people called 911 to check if their cell phones worked.

I was also puzzled by media stories suggesting that those with cell phones—97% of Americans—should have some redundancy. Were they suggesting we should have…. no, it can’t be that… landlines? Either that or walk to your nearest fire or police station in case of emergency, we were told. I’m only a block and a half from the nearest police station but I can imagine several scenarios where walking for help would be inefficient at best, impossible at worst.

This article had some interesting statistics:

34% of homeowners still have a landline. Only 15% of renters have a landline.
There is a big geographic difference in households that only have cell phones… The states with the lowest percentage of homes that only use cell phones are New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. The whole northeast has fewer homes that rely on only cell phones than the rest of the country.

We’re Both Of The Above people, New York State homeowners with both cellphones and a landline.

Missed the holiday

Related: March 10, 2024, was a holiday. “Let’s take a step back in time and celebrate National Landline Telephone Day with our activity, The History of the Telephone. This activity introduces students to Alexander Graham Bell and shows the impact of his invention – the telephone – on the U.S. population and how phones have changed since first introduced in 1876. For added fun, encourage students to make a list of people they know who still only use landline telephones.” Fun for your favorite seven-year-old.

In case you have forgotten, this was how you dialed your telephone in 1936 and 1954.

FB/IG

Regarding the March 5 event, I laughed quite a bit when people marked themselves Safe after the Facebook and Instagram outage. I understand folks tried unsuccessfully to reset their passwords multiple times, and that certainly would have been extremely frustrating. Somehow, I had missed it altogether until someone emailed me. Elon Musk was experiencing WAY too much glee over it.

In the outrage category, a friend I’ve known IRL since the 1960s noted they disputed a few Amazon claims they didn’t recognize. Amazon immediately locked them out of their account, disconnecting the Fire TVs, Alexa, AND access to Kindle. So they couldn’t turn on any of the lights in the house, watch TV or read. All of these devices/media were items they purchased! Amazon shouldn’t be able to disable them. This DID get resolved, but it’s rather Big Brother.

This got me thinking about the vulnerabilities we experience, from technical glitches to bad actors hacking into governmental, educational, and medical facilities. Those outages do generate outrage, especially the ransomware attacks. Do you ever wonder if the technological networks we’ve built our lives upon could come crashing down?

October rambling: doing an impression

old blogger, newish home

**From https://wronghands1.com/2021/09/21/blue-whale/**

The ivory-billed woodpecker, 22 other species extinct.

Pandora Papers: The largest investigation in journalism history exposes a shadow financial system that benefits the world’s most rich and powerful.

How decades of security blunders led to the formation of the TSA and forever changed the way we fly.

Texas’ Sweeping Abortion Ban Gives New Meaning to Oft-Misused Handmaid’s Tale Comparisons.

The Big Lie Refuses to Die.

Your gas stove, your health, and climate change.

The American West is running out of water—and Big Oil, of all things, can help fix it.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: PFAS and Voting Rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuf1m1VGu8Y Call Your Senator to Support the Equality Act

I saw the stories about the Facebook outage but kept reading it as the Facebook outrage. How Facebook’s Response To Whistleblower Could Make Their Crisis Worse. Incidentally, when Facebook was down, I went to Is It Down Right Now but it TOO was down. I ended up using Down For Everyone or Just Me and Is Your Website Down Down Right Now?

Why Is the U.S. Housing Market So Out of Whack?

Garbage odyssey: San Francisco’s bizarre, costly quest for the perfect trash can.

Inventions That Changed the World

Ted Koppel pays a visit to Mayberry (Mt. Airy, NC)

You’ve just been ‘ghosted’ after a job interview. Here’s how you should respond.

New York Public Library is ending fines on overdue materials forever. Albany Public Library did that a couple of years back.

Butt-dialing 911 is a challenge for police dispatchers

Why Seinfeld is the Worst Sitcom of All Time

The Peace of Wild Things – Wendell Berry (born 1934)

The medical ward

Pandemics are beaten by communities, not individuals. This describes my risk/reward calculations pretty well.

How Jared And Ivanka Botched Trump’s Pandemic Response.

Combating Anti-Vaxxers and Vaccine Hesitation.

Why Mandates Make Us Feel Threatened.

Albany Med prize winners: Coronavirus vaccine was years in the making.

Cognitive Bias Is Influencing Forensic Pathology Decisions

I had gone to the dentist this month to get a tooth uncapped because a cavity developed. It is one of those things that might have been prevented but for COVID. Anyway, they said, “We’re going to do an impression.” I knew what they meant, but my mind wandered to Rich Little doing John Wayne or Richard Nixon.

More Empathy Means Better Care, Less Medical Liability.

A Gene-Editing Experiment Let These Patients With Vision Loss See Color Again.

People with vitiligo debate whether to treat or embrace their condition

Race in America

Calls to Ban Books by Black Authors Are Increasing Amid Critical Race Theory Debates

Origin and Meaning of Critical Race Theory.

How Do We Dismantle Structural Racism in Medicine?

Manhattan Street Names Tied to Slavery Listed from A to Z.

Meet The First 2 Black Women To Be Inducted Into The National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Bruice’s Beach in California can return to descendants of a Black family in a landmark move.

Byzantium Shores, no. ForgottenStars, si!

I’ve been following Jaquandor at Byzantium Shores for well over a decade. He’s another upstater from the other end of the Erie Canal. His birthday is 45 years to the day after my late father’s.

He started blogging in 2002, over three years before I did. Eventually, he’s let the pseudonym go. Now Kelly Sedinger is blogging at ForgottenStars.net, where he promotes his books, two of which I have. He knows a ton about classical music, many of which I have linked to. I don’t quite get the pie in the face thing, but that’s OK.

Now I Know

The Problem with Space Pirates

Why the Ace of Spades is So Darn Big

The Worst Way to Get People to Watch a Movie?

Why Teams Wear Gray When Not At Home

How South Korea Massages Its Workforce

The Road Where Seat Belts are Banned

The Oldest PhD.

MUSIC

You’re Not Alone album by Roy Buchanan.

Feeling Good – Nina Simone.

Eine Alpensinfonie by Richard Strauss.

Coverville 1374: Cover Stories for John Mellencamp, Bob Geldof, and Chrissie Hynde.

The First Moonwalk? Bill Bailey tapping to an instrumental version of the Larks’ hit “The World is Waiting for Sunrise” performed by the Paul Williams Quartet

Autumn Leaves – Ebene Quartet.

Stuck in the Middle with You -MonaLisa Twins

Capriccio Italien by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Robert Russell Bennett’s Selections from Camelot. (Lerner and Loewe)

I Am Waiting – Ollabelle, a cover of The Rolling Stones song

The Final Act. 60 Minutes story on Tony Bennett.

Dave Koz and Friends Christmas Tour 2021 will be on the road, maybe in a town near you, between Nov 26 and Dec 23 with Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Jonathan Butler, and… Rebecca Jade!